MANCHESTER — — After backlash, redevelopment agency members voted Thursday to resolve misperceptions that they want to oust a small business owner from a Broad Street property, the agency chairman said.

"We don't want to go after a little guy," Chairman Tim Devanney said after the panel's meeting. "I'm a little guy and I understand what he's going through." Devanney is the owner of Highland Park Market.

The agency's unanimous vote, Devanney said, effectively drops inclusion of 357 Broad St. as a property the town might acquire in the ongoing effort to revive the Broad Street area. J&M Motorsports occupies the property now.

The agency had included 357 Broad St. in a proposed amendment to the 2009 Broad Street redevelopment plan as a parcel the town might want to buy. There had been no active negotiations with the owner of the property, but the agency had felt the time was right to add the parcel in the event of "favorable opportunities to acquire properties or rights associated with the extension of Center Springs Park in the future," according to an April 30 memo from Mark Pellegrini, the town's director of neighborhood services and economic development, to the board of directors.

The redevelopment plan, which calls for a mixed-use neighborhood, includes a connection between the park and Broad Street, and 357 Broad St. is in the area of the planned connection.

The proposed changes to the redevelopment plan were on the board of directors' May 7 meeting agenda. Michael Levesque, owner of J&M Motorsports, told directors he was confused about why the town would want to take the property, which he recently began leasing with an option to buy.

Levesque's comments stirred concern among directors, but the redevelopment agency never had plans to seize the property, Devanney said. The confusion, he said, apparently stems from the town's stalled negotiations with the owner of property on the other side of Broad Street.

The focus of those negotiations is a decades-old easement agreement that town officials see as a barrier to development. The town had tried to buy the easement rights from the owners of the Parkade Cinema and a vacant parcel at 296 Broad St. that borders the town-owned side of the Manchester Parkade. But years of talks with the principal owner of 296 Broad St. have come to a standstill, Devanney has said.

To move forward, the agency wants to amend the redevelopment plan to include 296 Broad St. and the Parkade Cinemas on a list of properties that could be acquired by eminent domain if necessary. Eminent domain is still a last resort, Devanney said Thursday, and the stalled talks have nothing to do with the owner of 357 Broad St.

When that property was first considered for acquisition, the previous automotive business had closed and the building was empty, Pellegrini said. Obviously, he said, the situation has changed. Now, directors are scheduled to vote on an amendment to the redevelopment plan that does not include 357 Broad St., Pellegrini said.